Intuitive decision-making and deep level diversity in entrepreneurial ICT teams

Abstract

Intuition, which ranges in style from affective to inferential to holistic (Pretz et al. 2014) can play a central role in decision-making, as decision makers must often balance intuition with rational analytical thinking. This paper explores the influence of intuition based decision style diversity on both the emergence of transactive memory systems (TMS) and team performance in an entrepreneurial setting. The uncertainty of an entrepreneurial setting leads to a greater emphasis on intuitive thinking in the team context. However, intuition as a basis for decision-making manifests itself in a variety of forms. And not all forms of intuitive tendencies lend themselves to a team decision-making context that is cohesive, or to decisions that are strategically coherent. Given that a diversity of intuitive tendencies is likely to be found in every team setting, and as such may exert a considerable influence on the decision-making process, we develop hypotheses in order to investigate the nature of this influence. Drawing on data collected from 188 participants across 22 countries and split into 48 entrepreneurial ICT teams, our findings show strong support for the influence of intuitive decision style diversity on both team level states and team performance. The explanatory model developed has significant implications for contemporary understanding of decision-making teams, deep-level diversity, the entrepreneurial process, and TMS research.